


Steel Phoenix

by taichara



Category: Lion's Gate Gundam (Canceled Movie), Mobile Suit Gundam The Motion Picture (Lion's Gate)
Genre: Worldbuilding: Ziong Corporate Empire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 03:52:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14252466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: The battles might have ended, but Sha plans a whole new shadow war.  Because, clearly,someonehas to do it.





	Steel Phoenix

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kalloway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalloway/gifts).



Oh, a happy family reunion in the end; that's what everyone always wants, right? That's what all the stories his mother read to him as a kid told him, anyway. But Sha -- even right that moment, in his mother's arms with his brother right there beside him -- didn't really buy that. Not any more. Too much was changed, and he was glad for it.

Standing there, hearing his mother's joy, Sha had only two things on his mind. 

The first was a simple one, all things being equal: _'What would have happened if I did kill you, Amaru? Because I could have and maybe I still should have._ It would have been so easy to kill him, right then, just run him through with the sword and have it over with. It _would_ have, and oh how he was still tempted -- outside of Gundam, Amaru was nothing compared to him now. 

Wasn't that right?

The second thought was, in its own way, even more simple: Ziong was destroyed -- or seemed to be, but Sha had some lingering doubts -- but Ziong being destroyed didn't mean the end of the Ziong Co-Prosperity Sphere ... unless no one else stepped up to hold the infrastructure together. And, standing there making all the expected happy noises, Sha thought back just a few short hours before and began making plans of his own. The Lieutenant had said some _interesting_ things, there at the end, before he'd chased after Amaru and Gundam ...

-*-

"I did not just hear you say what you just said. That's impossible."

The Lieutenant met Sha's flat incredulity with a tired half-smile that made the man's fearsome moustache bristle even more ferociously. In another world he might have patted the child's shoulder disarmingly; but this was still the Legion, and Legion work, and Sha had stopped being a child months ago. So he did no such thing, but the chiding jab in his retort was there all the same -- the point was going to be made, one way or the other, while the entire Co-Prosperity Sphere teetered in the balance of one woman's patient machinations, because the Lieutenant was no fool:

"Didn't you just ask me that very question, boy? You asked whether the Legion ever did the wrong thing. 

"It did. It did and it will do the wrong thing again, because the Legion is made of human beings and -- this is a secret that's no such thing -- no matter how hard we try, we can't eliminate human error. We can try, Lord knows we try, and the Legion shows us the way. Stay on the task, follow directives, complete the goal, no matter the cost. But it doesn't make the Legion infallible. You hear me, boy?"

"I'm not a _boy_ any more, Lieutenant." 

Flat, too flat to sound angry; the Lieutenant smiled again, pleased at Sha's hard-won control in the face of provocation.

"You stopped being a boy when you fought your way to being a Legionnaire. You're part of something bigger than your brother could imagine. 

"Now, go do your duty, boy."

-*

And so Sha did. He fought, and he brought low Gundam -- his father's wonder machine -- and Amaru who'd always been the one that his father favoured, and in the end did it even matter? Because he had the chance to deal the killing blow and prove himself once and for all and he --

No. That wasn't _failure_. Failure implied a loss. And Sha didn't _lose_ , he just decided to change what game was being played. Let Amaru have his wonder machine and get the girl; after all, Sha supposed, their mother deserved a daughter-in-law after _you killed our sister_ , Amaru -- and after losing their father, well, their mother deserved to enjoy a victory as cunning as any Legion strategy he'd been drilled on. He was almost in awe of it all, really.

Let them all have their moments. Let them have their peace. It would be a peace they kept through _his_ efforts, and they'd never even know it.

-*-

Orchestrating a climb to power without being identified was a balancing act at the best of times, for the best of actors; making the attempt from Oneill 7 was probably the height of insanity, but Sha was fine with that. He'd accepted that he was a long way from sane years ago -- years that proved that, while he'd walked away from the Legion's ranks, the Legion's ways would never leave _him_. That bothered the people of Oneill 7, but Sha didn't care. The Legion, flawed as it was, gave him what he brother never had, and never would --

He could hear Amaru now, outside and laughing with Sara -- something else he'd predicted right -- and their toddlers. Well, good on them. He had work to do, far more important work that tinkering with toys and puttering around the garden with their mother.

... Who, Sha mused, scanning over the latest feed of encrypted data with jaundiced amusement, had to have _some_ kind of inkling of what he was orchestrating. But not one peep ever escaped her lips, and not once had he ever found his uplinks or his data tampered with. Did Camellia approve? Disapprove? See it all as just another maneuver by proxy on the chess board, and Sha taking up the queen piece in her place? Who knew? 

It was all irrelevant, in any case. Camellia was also just a part of the past.

Brows furrowing, Sha picked over the feeds, and that one particular communique from a certain newly minted Commander, and planned his next moves and next targets. One cog meant nothing; the Legion meant everything. He'd still see to that.

Ziong only needed _one_ successor.

-*-

_Look at them all. They have no idea what's bought them this peace they fawn over so much._

No bitterness in Sha's thoughts as he stood on the cliffside with his family, not really; a touch of well-banked inner fire, a little disdain, but not bitterness, oh no. Never that. Besides, it was poor form to behave poorly in front of the dead ... even if _someone_ was still overlooked. No matter. Sha had long since arranged for Nora's memorial in the heart of the Legion's grand headquarters -- a new-minted edifice of shining alloy and cold calm, where Legionnaires learned to fight as a well-oiled machine in the name of _right_ causes, _proper_ causes. _Human_ causes.

He'd not make the mistake his father did, that Amaru did, of letting a machine control humanity. Neo-Ziong would never bow to a machine collective, and its Legion would spread mankind across the stars faster and further than ever before. _Without_ Amaru and his happy domesticity.

_You have no idea what I've given up, or what I lost, or what I've done, and I have no intention of ever telling you._

No, Sha would rather go to his grave smug in the knowledge that Amaru, in the end, _owed_ him, all unwittingly. Owed him for staying his sword, that day; owed him for making the sacrifice so Amaru and Sara could have their happy ending.

Owed him for the blissful conceit of leaving Gundam to molder in the moss and dirt, a perch for birds, an immobile statue that was no longer needed --

Not because he needed be called on. No matter what _they_ thought.

Because he was obsolete.

Sha was _also_ his father's son, after all.

And Neo-Ziong was prepared for _anything_.


End file.
